ARKANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY, Volume 22 (Winter 1963), p. 99
Extracts from the Memoirs
Of William Franklin Avera
Edited By HENRY CATHEY*
Kansas State College
- WILLIAM FRANKLIN AVERA WAS BORN IN ALABAMA, DECEMBER 23, 1846, AND WAS
- brought to Camden, Arkansas, by his parents when he was two years old. With the exception of the war years, he grew up and spent his life in Ouachita County, Arkansas. At the age of sixteen, he joined the Fifth Arkansas Artillery Company, C. S. A., and served for the duration of the war. Upon returning to Ouachita County he became identified with the business, civic and political activities of the county and state. He served two terms as County Judge, three terms in the state legislature, and was postmaster at Camden. He owned and edited the Ouachita Herald, was a member of the Board of Trustees of the Arkansas Industrial University, and he held other posts of honor and trust. He died November 19, 1904.
- In the spring of 1904, while living in Camden, he wrote an account of his life at the request of his daughter-in-law, Mrs. Lula Avera. He dealt particularly with the Civil War and with social and economic conditions in the years following the war. Since 1904 the manuscript has remained in the hands of members of the family and in June and July of 1962 three typewritten copies were made by Henry and Brenda Cathey. The memoirs consist of slightly more than one hundred double-spaced typewritten pages. The first thirty-four pages were written in chronological order and the remaining pages are events as he recalled them.
- ______________________
- *Cathey is on the physical science faculty of Fort Hays Kansas State College. W. F. Avera is his
- great-grandfather.
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